Monday, May 30, 2022

Published May 30, 2022 by with 0 comment

A Simple Dice Game

My son asked about a seemingly simple dice game and I didn't know how to answer immediately. The question is:

Player 1 rolls a 6-side die. Player 2 rolls a 6-sided die. If player 2 rolls the same as player 1, he rolls again. If he again rolls the same, he loses. How often will each player win? 

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Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Published November 10, 2021 by with 3 comments

Simple Tutorial for Hosting a CRUD Node App on AWS Elastic Beanstalk

I had trouble finding (working) simple tutorials for running Node.js CRUD apps on AWS using Elastic Beanstalk so I wrote one from scratch and documented it.
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Sunday, October 24, 2021

Published October 24, 2021 by with 0 comment

How Do You Subtract Binary Numbers?

What is the value of something like 101001 - 1101?
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Thursday, October 14, 2021

Published October 14, 2021 by with 0 comment

How Do I Determine My Raise Given Inflation?

If you get a 10% raise, and inflation is 6%, did you actually get a raise?
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Saturday, October 2, 2021

Published October 02, 2021 by with 0 comment

Can You Confirm Performance Improvements With Noisy Software Benchmarks?

Say you run 20 tests before and after a code change meant to speed up the code, but there's a lot of noise in your benchmarks. Some simple statistical tests can help you determine if you actually have an improvement in that noise.
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Monday, September 13, 2021

Published September 13, 2021 by with 1 comment

Why Do We Multiply the Way We Do?

We could just repeatedly add the numbers but we don't. Is the algorithm we use actually faster?
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Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Published August 31, 2021 by with 0 comment

Exploring Senior Software Engineer Salary Data in levels.fyi

levels.fyi is a great resource for software salary info and it's easily mineable. I was curious how salaries in what are sometimes considered medium cost-of-living cities compare.
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Sunday, August 1, 2021

Published August 01, 2021 by with 1 comment

How to Add a Vertical Scrollbar to Plotly

Plotly doesn't have the built-in ability to scroll vertically with a fixed x axis unfortunately, but you can mimic that fairly easily...
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Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Published June 30, 2021 by with 1 comment

If 10 Vaccinated and 10 Unvaccinated People Die, Can We Still Say Vaccines Work?

You will almost certainly be seeing headlines about vaccinated people dying and  might even see that more vaccinated than unvaccinated die. Here's one from the week that I wrote this post. Why do we still say vaccines work if this is happening?
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Sunday, June 13, 2021

Published June 13, 2021 by with 5 comments

Wheel Options Strategy Simulations

The 'Wheel' is an options strategy that combines cash-secured puts with covered calls. I sometimes have trouble really grasping options strategies in my head, so simulating some scenarios gives me a better feel.
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Friday, May 21, 2021

Published May 21, 2021 by with 0 comment

Negative values with a log axis in Plotly

Although log10(<any number less than or equal to 0>) is not defined, there are situations where you want to visualize data as if it were. How can you get plotly to do that? Another way of asking is 'how can you mimic symlog functionality in plotly?'
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Sunday, May 2, 2021

Published May 02, 2021 by with 0 comment

Simple way to see code coverage in python

Sometimes you want to quickly see unit test coverage of your code. Coverage.py makes that really simple.
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Tuesday, April 6, 2021

Published April 06, 2021 by with 1 comment

Thinking in terms of probabilities

We suck at probability. A common trap we fall into is failing to realize this and thinking in terms of absolutes.
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